Category Archives: theology

Post navigation

24 page tract (as paginated by the publisher this count includes covers), stapled, 3 1/8 by 5 3/4 in. Undated, this printing is no earlier than 1937 given the ad in the rear for Cecil James Sharp’s Personal Evangelism (1937). Claude Spencer (Author Catalog) by 1946 knows of four printings of this tract, all with pictures of Bibles on the cover. He doesn’t know of this printing, no. 3252. The cost of this one, per hundred, is $2.50; it is significantly higher than the .75 per c of the ones Claude knows. So, maybe even late 40’s?

I see from the Christian Standard index that Isaac Walton Lowman died in about June or July 1924. One G. Lowman, his child I presume, authored an obituary published in the 19 July 1924 issue of CS at page 1067. Isaac authored 52 obituaries for the pages of Christian Standard from October 1895 through December 1915. CS published one notice of his, of some kind, in 1909. Another about an evangelistic meeting is titled in the index as “Loogootee (Ind.) meeting (from the minister). 1911 1 Ap:542.” Loogootee, Indiana is a new one to me…with a name like that I would surely remember it. Perhaps some Hoosier can comment about Loogootee?

Isaac appears, barely, in Christian-Evangelist. In 1905 he authors “Impression of city campaigns by workers engaged” (page 274) and in 1911 there appears “Our budget” on page 1458. The latter includes a portrait!

I’ve scoured neither Google nor other print sources for Isaac. I welcome information, though. At present it appears he had an active ministry of some twenty years’ duration, some of it in Loogootee Indiana. Apparently he died after about a ten-year retirement. Where, if anywhere, he matriculated for ministerial preparation remains unknown. What other, if any, publications from his pen saw it through a press remains unknown. Details of the publishing of this tract remain unknown. For all I know Isaac had it worked up by a job printer and used it in that 1911 “city campaign.” How Kromer Columbus Ice got his hands on it, and why he kept it, well…who knows? But he did, and here it is:

F. L. Rowe is editor and publisher of Christian Leader out of Cincinnati, Ohio. This broadside tract is undated, ca. 1910’s-1930’s. Tract theology is underexplored, especially considering how prevalent they were in past generations. Given the space constraints of tract (or leaflet or broadside) form, they of neccessity must get at the issue quickly while resolving it efficiently. Among Churches of Christ and Christian Churches tracts are eminently doctrinal and often polemical. For these reasons they are a very good starting point for historical and theological inquiry into the shape and content of Restorationist doctrinal discourse. This one is undated, but since Rowe sold Christian Leader just prior to WW2, it must be pre-War. It gives us a good, brief snapshot view of a pneumatology urged by a conservative Northern publisher from the turn of the century up to the war. Tolle lege!